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GeoTerraTestudo said:N2TORTS said:Very well said Geo and great writing skills to boot …. ( both you and Mark are superb writers) Also a classy debate …..and Like I’ve said before your “ one smart cookie†With a lot of folks learning I’m sure!
I still wonder though if such a different species , than why are they able to produce offspring? I guess what drew my interests to them years back . I have herd of a radi x RF but no “ hard†proof. RFx YF common ….and much of the Leo’s today are washed genes…. Aren’t those different species ( that would have different DNA but produced offsprings) or in the Leo case sub species….?
Darwin once wrote … “No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.â€
JD~
Thank you. You're a smart cookie, too. I think we're now getting to the important aspects of this debate, which are, 1) if these animals can hybridize, then why not let them? And 2) If we let them, what harm can come from it? Allow me to repeat one line from your passage above:
"I still wonder though if such a different species , than why are they able to produce offspring?"
Within a given species, mating results in some degree of interbreeding. Not everybody mates with everyone else, obviously, but enough mixing goes on to keep the species together as a unit. That is, to prevent evolution into another species. However, sometimes populations split up for one reason or another (migration, famine, drought, new landscape features, whatever). If the separation is short, then the two populations may get back together and continue interbreeding. In that case, no speciation will occur. However, if the separation persists, and the two populations remain separate for a long time (thousands to millions of years), then they will eventually start evolving in different directions. New colors or morphologies may arise, new physiological traits may evolve, and new mating rituals may appear. Then, depending on how long the separation continues, if they ever meet again, individuals from one population will probably not choose to mate with those from another, even if they are still genetically compatible to one degree or another.
This lack of compatibility could have more significance than just mating. The two populations may have just drifted apart, in which case hybridization probably wouldn't have an impact on fitness. However, there could be more to it than that: the two populations may have become adapted to new conditions since their divergence.
Now thats what I'm talking about!......Great info on the entire post ~
JD~